Well Done?

Managers who think they're terrific at judging results on
merit alone should think again, says a recent study by Maurice
Schweitzer, assistant professor at the Wharton School, and Karen R.
Chinander, assistant professor of operations management at Florida
Atlantic University, Jupiter. "When people are reviewing
results, their perceptions of your efforts matter," Schweitzer
says. "It's not enough to turn in solid work. The
impression of how that work was created will matter."

Owners and managers need to be aware of this "automatic
bias" with employees and their own customers. Employees who
accompany finished work with stories of their efforts to produce it
are playing to this bias by trying to evoke a positive evaluation
of their work based as much on the effort as the end result,
Schweitzer says. Hard work often delivers superior results, but
it's no guarantee. "You need to judge output on its own
merits," he says. "If you have questions about it, then
perhaps how it came about is relevant."

Managers can turn this same dynamic to their advantage when
working with clients. Introducing status reports and finished work
with a tale of the heroics that produced them, says Schweitzer,
will evoke the bias to view the work more favorably.

In the Clear?

Bad news for companies trying to win federal contracts: At press
time, the Defense Security Service (DSS), an agency within the
Department of Defense, had a pending caseload of more than 209,000
personnel security investigations for federal government
contractors, as well as military and civilian personnel. Routine
clearances that don't send up any red flags take an average of
two and a half months, the DSS reports, while uncomplicated
top-secret clearances take at least six to seven months.

One point of relief: If an initial screening of a new applicant
doesn't set off any alarms, an interim clearance may be granted
within several days. If a clearance application does get sticky,
security officers handling the investigation will deliver their
reports to the actual agency overseeing the contract, which then
decides whether to grant the clearance or not.

In October 2003, the DSS handed over new requests for security
investigations to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Until further notice, the process for applying remains the same:
Requests should be made through the Electronic Personnel Security
Questionnaire. Within the next year, the process will be switched
to the OPM's e-QIP online form. The e-QIP Web gateway is
www.opm.gov/e-qip.

Stress can undermine the productivity and quality you need to
boost revenues and profits to the level where you can afford to
hire additional people and upgrade equipment. "Often, there
are seasonal peaks and valleys, and people learn to stretch during
the valleys. But if the stretching is going on all the time because
you're not putting money into the business, tensions will
arise," says Jeff Trautman, vice president of The Brighton
Group, a professional services firm in Seattle, specializing in
outplacement and leadership coaching.

Despite constant pressure to cut costs, employees crave
reassurance that things are essentially going well with the
company, and that you, as the owner, are confident that better
times are emerging. In addition, taking the time to sit down with
employees and sort out colliding priorities can make a huge
difference, says Kenneth W. Christian, Ph.D., a psychologist and
author of Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of
Adult Underachievement (HarperCollins).

"When people who are normally organized get swamped, they
use a panic reaction and become far less efficient than they were.
Everything looms at them, and they can't figure out what is
important. They are driven to distraction," says Christian.
"If you start to see these signs, help them redistribute the
load."

"There is no way that a PR firm of our size-nine people, $1
million in billings-can afford to staff up for every new project
that comes in," says Ann Klein, president and founder of Ann
Klein & Associates Inc., a PR firm in Marlton, New Jersey.

Klein's tip-offs that her staff is stretched too thin: Over
80 percent of their hours worked are billable; they no longer have
time for professional association work; they get headaches. She
also uses her own time as a barometer: When her time devoted to
billable hours slips over 50 percent, and she's not spending as
much time on bringing in new business, she knows she's in
trouble.

Realizing that staffing and workload might not match up smoothly
for the foreseeable future, Klein set up a circle of "senior
counselors" whom she could call at a moment's notice to
step in and handle overflow work. These self-employed, seasoned
experts in specialties such as crisis management and writing take
the burden from the staff and help Klein outsource some of the
stress.